EditorialOff-duty police and bars; its time for a closer lookLater this month, the City Councils Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing on Councilmember David Yasskys proposed legislation to allow uniformed off-duty police officers to be posted outside bars and nightclubs.Scoopys notebookTalking PointsIts kids versus cars in an East Village schoolyardBy Tessa HuxleyAt lunchtime on an early spring day you can find several young teens awkwardly hanging from a small jungle gym in a crowded schoolyard. Their knees nearly touching the ground, they laugh and clown around, surrounded by the chain-link fences that separate them from a dead-end street of city housing, renovated tenements and garden plots  and a small yard full of School Safety and other vehicles.

A shoe on 10th Ave. Perhaps lost during a wild night or wilder early morning. Below, part of a movie poster for Bad Boys II (the arm is Will Smiths), in the W. 20s between 11th Ave. and the West Side Highway. Villager photos by Milo Hess

NotebookBaptist churches n poboys; an outing to the countryBy Andrei Codrescu The country fair in Clinton, Louisiana, was either a vegetable-and-fruit market, or a delightful display of artisan wares by country folk, we decided, as we drove up Plank Road from Baton Rouge on a crisp blue flower-scented mild day of humbling blessedness. Few cars were on the road this early on Sunday morning, but the parking lots of the many churches on the way were full.Letters to the editor

News In Brief

Good old time for Good Old Lower East SideGood Old Lower East Side celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Angel Orensanz Foundation on Norfolk St. last Friday evening. Known for short as GOLES, the East Village tenants advocacy organization honored the Feldman family in recognition of GOLES founder Floyd Feldman. In photo at left, Margaret Hughes, GOLES director, left, shared a moment with JoAnn Wypijewski, a GOLES board member for more than 20 years. Legal Aid lawyer Elon Harpaz, a former GOLES tenant organizer, right, was given an award by Jeanette Zelhof of MFY Legal Services. Other honorees included former Councilmember Miriam Friedlander, Keith Cylar and Charles King, co-presidents of Housing Works, and Representative Nydia Velazquez.

SPORTSSuper soccer mom gracefully balances DUSC and danceBy Judith StilesThese days many mothers are under pressure with the dual demands of work and family, a balancing act that leaves them all wishing there were a few extra hours in the day. Joni Petre-Scholz of Greenwich Village manages this juggling act superbly, along with the added attraction of being the business manager of Downtown United Soccer Club, where she is better known as DUSCJONI.

A maze meant for one and allDiana Carulli repainted her labyrinth in Union Sq.s northern plaza on Tuesday morning. Villager photo by Elisabeth Robert

Are off-duty police officers the solution for noisy bars?By Lincoln AndersonIn its ongoing effort to try to control noise associated with nightlife, Community Board 3 has voted in favor of allowing bars and nightclubs to hire off-duty police officers for security and noise control. Officers performing paid detail, as it is known, would be in uniform and carry guns and, of course, be able to make arrests.The Villager receives 10 NYPA awardsThe Villager was voted one of New York States best community weekly newspapers, winning 10 New York Press Association awards, including three first-place awards, in NYPAs 2003 Better Newspaper Contest. The awards were announced last weekend at the associations annual convention in Saratoga Springs.Pei block tops list at Sexton town hallBBy Albert Amateau New York University President John Sexton held his second community town hall meeting last week, a follow-up to his initial one a year ago, and found neighbors still worked up about the universitys plans for future development.

Hillarys selling like hotcakes at designers boutiquesBy Elizabeth OBrien This spring, Marc Jacobs has given his fans a new way to make a fashion statement. Along with the designers delicate pastel looks, shoppers at his Mercer and Bleecker St. boutiques can buy T-shirts emblazoned with Hillary Clintons face. They look somewhat out of place: a bit of thrift-store kitsch surrounded by pink coats that fetch $3,000.Not all greengrocer workers reap fruits of victoryBy Andrew KennisOnce a month, Chano sends $300 to $400 dollars home to his family that continues to reside in his pueblo (small town) in the impoverished Mexican state of Guerrero. We are trying to build a church, Chano explains in a sheepish and subtle voice and in broken Spanish. Chano is Mexican, but he is also indigenous, thus Spanish is his second language and Nahuatl his first.Group hopes to better relations on Christopher St.By Deborah Lynn Blumberg Tensions between gay and transgender youth and local residents have run high in around Christopher St. in the West Village in recent years. Residents complain of noise and rowdy, sometimes illicit, behavior. The youth, many of who are black and Latino, say all that the residents are concerned with is their property values and, in some cases, are simply racist.Vincents restaurant celebrates 100 years on Mott St.By Jerry Tallmer
But Giuseppe and Carmela Siano decided to stay with their pushcart right there, at the corner of Mott and Hester, where Little Italy melts into Chinatown, and set up shop selling clams, mussels, scungilli in the shell, out of that pushcart. The year was 1894.Christo and Jeanne Claudes long path to GatesBy JERRY TALLMERNow the cranes had done their damndest, the mob from the press tour of the exhibit was beginning to dispel, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, with her flaming red hair, sat, catching their breaths and signing a few catalogues, at a small table in the vast sunlit Engelhart Court of the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Like a Hollywood movie By Jerry Tallmer Dear Monty David Singer: Let me tell you something about your mommy. Youre only five-months-old now, and probably not quite ready to see the Off-Broadway musical at the Variety Arts that your mother, Melissa Levis, wrote with David Weinstein. It began life as an Off-Off-Broadway revue in last years Fringe Festival  a big, big little hit  and do you know how your mommy did her research for it?Koch On FilmBy Ed KochDogville (-) If you see this three-hour film and conclude that it is a genius work of art, Ill feel like a clod. However, you may agree with me that it is anti-American and the good reviews it received are all hype. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (-) Early on during this film I became bored, and by the end of it, I was sorry I had selected it for review. Historical memory play on H. Arendt Renewing friendship with Nazi supporterBy Davida Singer Hannah and Martin is a historical memory play, a heady mix of fact and fiction that moves back and forth like a collage. It begins with the decision of Jewish political theorist, Hannah Arendt to renew her friendship with famed philosopher and former mentor, Martin Heidegger. Earlier, she had a torrid affair with him, before Heideggers staunch support of Nazi Germany.

Band with musical integrity knows how to have funBy Aileen Torres Emotional intensity is the essence of good music, and Barbez is a band that reinvents the concept of music as lightning-bolt-cum-messenger by creating parallels to the vicissitudes of life.